Do you want to start a dating or matchmaking website from scratch? Or you need a sample dating website business plan template? If YES, then i advice you read on. Dating or matchmaking services involve helping people to meet, communicate, interact and eventually build a romantic relationship.
It enables people who are single and searching for partners to meet people who they are compatible with, start to interact and eventually get to know each other so well that they can start a relationship independent of the matchmaker.
How Does Matchmaking Work?
Every matchmaking service starts with someone who is known as a matchmaker. The matchmaker is responsible for bringing people who he/she feels are a perfect match together. When a person registers with a matchmaker, the matchmaker would take time to get to know the individual; he/she would ask questions that would reveal the nature and character of the person, their jobs, likes and dislikes, life ambition and goals, accomplishments, past relationships and experiences, finances, education and a lot more.
They would also want to know if the client has had any criminal records, medical problems or bankruptcy issues. Apart from the questions they ask their clients to reveal their true nature, match makers are usually good judges of character and can easily tell whether two people are compatible or not.
After getting to know the clients, a matchmaker would then scan through his list of clients to see if there is a match. Sometimes, there might be one or two matches and in that case, a matchmaker might leave it to the client to choose a preferred one. When the matchmaker has found a perfect match, he would arrange another meeting with each of the clients separately to further determine compatibility.
Compatibility issues are taken very seriously in the matchmaking business and a matchmaker would take a lot of steps to ensure that two people are compatible before matchmaking them because it would never work if they are not.
The next stage is the introduction stage. This may be done in different ways but the most popular way is for the couple to go on a first date. The matchmaker would set up a date for both of them and send them an invite so that they can get to sit down and talk about each other.
After the date, the matchmaker meets with each of them separately to ask about their feelings about the other person while the date lasted. Sometimes, it may take more than one date to be able to form an opinion but usually, people would know if the other person is suitable for them or not after the first date. It all sounds so easy and fun but it’s not and matchmaking has grown from just a hobby to a lucrative billion dollar industry.
A lot of people have built big business empires from matchmaking business. However, several people are still skeptical about starting a matchmaking business because they are of the opinion that people prefer physical meeting to matchmaking but that is not entirely true, there are lots of benefits of matchmaking which makes it preferable for a lot of people-:
3 Benefits of Starting a Dating or Matchmaking Service Website
a. It serves busy people
Young, busy executives may find it hard to get dates because most of the times they are holed up at work and busy with meetings etc. Matchmaking makes it possible for such people to hook up and hang out.
b. You learn information about the person before meeting them
Unlike face-to-face dating, you can get to know the person and gather enough information about them before committing yourself. In
Face-to-face dating, you might have to go on a date with the person a couple of times before you can learn anything tangible and later you find out that you are not compatible and that you have just been wasting your time but matchmaking eliminates this because you get to learn information about the person to an extent before you commit yourself.
c. You can meet people from anywhere in the world
Usually, face-to-face dating limits you to just the people around you but with matchmaking, you can meet people that you may not have had the opportunity to meet with physically. To start your dating/matchmaking business, here are the steps to take-:
Starting a Dating or Matchmaking Service – Sample Business Plan Template
1. Decide on the type of matchmaking service you want to start
There are different niches in the matchmaking business, some of which include-:
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Online matchmaking
This kind of business is strictly operated on the internet. A website would be created where people can register and then meet up with the people they want. You would make your money from membership subscriptions and adverts as a result of the traffic generated by your website.
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Physical matchmaking service
Unlike online matchmaking, this is usually conducted off the internet and may be more expensive and regulated. The clients are also carefully matched and better protected.
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Elite matchmaking service
This type of service caters solely to wealthy people. It focuses on helping rich people to meet and date other rich people.
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Religious matchmaking service
This is also designed to help singles within the same religious group meet and date each other.
2. Decide on a method of interaction
The next step is to decide on how you want to interact with your clients. If you would be meeting them face-to-face, you would need a cozy, warm office where you would receive your clients, store files and arrange meetings but if you decide to go for online matchmaking, what you would need is a website and a lot of advertisements.
3. Draft a contract document
Next, you need to spell out the terms and conditions of your services and also set your charges and how you would receive payments. For online dating and matchmaking, your payment would be based on subscription fees, affiliate programs and advert placements.
4. Advertise and hookup a few people
The most important thing in this business is how to get your clients. Advertisement is very important. Ensure that you advertise in social media, magazines, talk shows, blogs and all other advertising mediums. You should also try to hook quite a few friends, family, colleagues and associates up to start with and ask them to refer other people to you for a commission. You can also get clients by hosting events and meet-ups for singles.
5. Protect your client
It is also very important in this business to protect your clients from exploitations and dangers. This would be done by picking your clients with care and doing your due diligence to ensure that nobody tries to play games or pretend to be what they are not.
How to Setup a Dating Website
As people become more familiar with the Internet, the number of things that can be done online keeps increasing. And since the Internet is widely used as a way for people to communicate, online dating sites have become a very popular way for people to find and meet romantic partners online. Setting up your own dating site can be tremendously rewarding. It can be great fun. It can be stimulating. It can be fulfilling. And it can bring you huge financial success.
However, getting a dating site off the ground takes time, hard work, and creativity. And you need to dedicate a whole lot of resources into the project if you really want to attract attention—because you will surely face stiff competition. To set up a successful dating site, you need to get things right from the start. The following guidelines will help you start your own dating site:
a. Research the competition
Search the web for lists of dating sites, and visit as many of them as possible. Spend more time on the most successful ones, figuring out their features. Ask yourself what features are great or interesting, what design elements are attractive, and what population segment seems to have the most number of members. You will need all the information you gather during this step to decide what to add and what not to add to your own dating site.
b. Brainstorm
Don’t limit the features of your dating site to what you have seen on the successful dating sites. Think of innovative features you can add to your own site to make it even more interesting and give it the competitive edge. For example, most other dating sites charge a fee for membership. You can consider making membership on your own site free.
However, this means you have to design your site a bit differently, as you will seek to generate revenue from other sources, such as advertisements and affiliate marketing. In addition, you need to choose a niche for your dating site. For example, you site could be meant for only seniors looking for romantic partners, over-30 singles, black singles, teens, people suffering from incurable health conditions, and so on.
Starting with a specific niche is a smart way to quickly attract attention and set your site apart from the competition. Trying to target a wide range of people at once will only drain your resources and still not get you the results you want.
You also need to think of a good name for your dating site that should be descriptive and easy to remember. When choosing this name, factor in your chosen niche. However, avoid a niche-reflective name if you have plans to expand the scope of your member base in the future.
c. Register your domain name and purchase hosting
Having decided on a good name for your dating site, you need to register the domain name to be able to use it online. This simply involves visiting the website of a domain name registrar, checking the availability of the domain name, and securing the domain name by making a payment (usually around $10 per year).
Namecheap and Godaddy are the two most popular domain name registrars. In addition, you will need to purchase a hosting plan from a reliable web hosting service provider. In case you are a total newbie, you will need a hosting plan to provide the “space” that your dating site will occupy on the Internet.
d. Design your dating site
With the availability of free and paid website design software, you can design your dating site yourself—even if you have no prior knowledge of website design or development. Some of these software packages are web-based while others are meant to be downloaded and installed on your PC.
Examples of software packages you can use include NVu, PersonalWebKit, WebStudio 4.0, Homestead, and Dreamweaver. When designing your site, you should consider the color scheme, the layout, the copy, the navigation, and the site mapping. All these feature play together to make your site user-friendly, so you need to get them right.
e. Test your site
Before sending your dating site live on the web, you want to be sure every aspect is working perfectly. Tell your friends and relatives to visit the “demo” site and try out the various features to see if everything is right. Check how your site looks on various browsers, and see how it displays on mobile devices. This step is necessary because it will reveal any errors you need to fix before sending your site live.
f. Go live and start marketing
Once you have checked that everything about your dating site is perfectly set, upload it to your web host and publish the on the web. Once you publish your site, start attracting attention to it by adopting various online and offline marketing strategies, including search engine optimization, paid advertising, social media marketing, display advertising, newspapers and magazines, and so on.